ABSTRACT
In considering the factors responsible for the creation of the national wealth, statesmen and the public have often been far too prone to overlook the indispensable services of those institutions which assemble and distribute the credit resources of the country. Too often has the nation been depicted as merely a vast workshop in which the technique of physical production alone demands the thoughtful and continuous attention of the country’s best brains. But without an adequate mechanism of exchange, production cannot function to its fullest capacity. General Francis A.Walker wrote indeed without exaggeration that it was much more important to the people of London to possess stable exchange relations with other countries than to keep in repair its largest bridge across the Thames; and a contemporary American economist has remarked that if the world were stripped of its telegraph wires it would not suffer more than if business should be obliged to conduct its operations without the use of credit.
